


Love Is Ignorant of Time

by GideonGraystairs



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alec Lightwood Deserves Nice Things, Alternate Universe - After College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Closeted Alec Lightwood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, First Love, Flashbacks, Getting Back Together, Healing, High School, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Insecure Alec Lightwood, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Non-Chronological, POV Second Person, Past Relationship(s), Post-Break Up, Secret Relationship, Writer Alec Lightwood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28721358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GideonGraystairs/pseuds/GideonGraystairs
Summary: You think of smoke in your lungs and sneaking out past midnight, the sputtering engine of a forty year old sedan turning over and muddy sneakers kicked up on the dashboard, The Killers blasting out of a crackling radio and the feeling of sitting side by side with danger, of being free for the first time in your life. You think of hot breath against your ear and the whisper of something new and foreign.Through the test of time, there are two things that have endured - Alec's love for Magnus, and the distance it has created between him and the people who are still here. Because Magnus is gone, nothing but memories that will always haunt him, and yet the mark he left on Alec has never faded. Maybe it's the only love Alec will ever have to hold onto, and maybe that memory is enough.Or maybe, when he sees Magnus again all these years later, it isn't.
Relationships: Background Clary Fray/Jace Wayland - Relationship, Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	Love Is Ignorant of Time

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5gnmu2rkZP6r9edW1c71Yl?si=g67XpzJ9SluqGHHgfgHepQ) a link to the playlist I put together to get me in the mood while writing this. It includes 'My Own' by Whitaker, of which I took the title of the fic from. Feel free to listen before, while, or after reading <3

“He’s in love,” your sister says, hand resting on her hip and head tilting deliberately. Her hair is a raven tangle tumbling over her shoulders and you find yourself staring at the curl tucked behind her left ear. You can remember a time when you thought she was cute, such a precious little thing, but you can’t bring yourself to call her that now. She is strong, and she is a forest fire, and there is nothing cute about burning. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Yeah,” you choke, staring at the bright red polish on her fingernails. It’s fresh and perfect, not a chip in sight. “Right.”

You think of smoke in your lungs and sneaking out past midnight, the sputtering engine of a forty year old sedan turning over and muddy sneakers kicked up on the dashboard, The Killers blasting out of a crackling radio and the feeling of sitting side by side with danger, of being free for the first time in your life. You think of hot breath against your ear and the whisper of something new and foreign.

“Just let him enjoy it,” Isabelle tells you with a stern look. In the kitchen, you can still hear your brother laughing as his girlfriend tries and fails to rein him in enough to finish making dinner. They sound happy, but it’s of the young and stupid kind. You know it won’t last.

“Okay,” you agree, because they’re still your siblings and you could never do anything to hurt them. It doesn’t mean you have to like Clary - the girl Jace has dragged back home with him this time - and you can already say for certain that you probably never will. It just means you have to smile and pretend. You’re good at that.

Isabelle smiles her award winning smile, full-toothed like when she was little and didn’t know the power of a smirk. You miss that version of her, the one who’d stay up all night with you in a fort made out of blankets and laugh when you played with her hair. That girl disappeared somewhere in middle school, replaced by one with a sharp tongue and a talent for manipulation.

You still love her just as much, but this girl is harder to trust with your secrets.

“Alec, dear, would you set the table?” your mother calls from somewhere in the kitchen. You can hear the murmur of Clary’s voice in the background, but it’s drowned out by the clanging of dishes.

You do as you’re told, like you always have, and ignore the way Jace is grinning down at his girlfriend as you pull the dishes from the cupboard. He looks up at you when you go for the utensils. It’s the kind of look that tells you he’s too happy and in love to see how much you hate him for it.

You don’t, though. Not really. He’s still your brother, just like Izzy is still your sister, and you could never be angry with him for being better than you. If you could, you’d have spent your whole life angry.

It’s not that you’re mad that he’s found someone who laughs at his sharp-witted remarks and that he likes enough to bring home to meet your parents. It’s that looking at them brings up everything you’ve spent the last few years of your life burying so far down you thought you’d never be able to find it again. You had hoped you wouldn’t, but if you’re being honest with yourself you will always be able to close your eyes and feel the cracked leather seats of the sedan against your bare skin.

Your mother pats your arm as she passes you, a show of gratitude. You gather six of every dish available and follow her back out into the dining room. You don’t look at Jace or Clary as you do, but Isabelle catches your eye from where she’s found her place at the table.

It’s Christmas. Or, at least, it almost is. It’s the only reason you’re all here in the same house for once and the only reason you know the Clary thing is serious. Isabelle is here for the next two weeks, off from university for the winter break, but Jace and Clary live in LA and though it’s not far, he had to take time off work to make it, so they won’t be staying long. You won’t, either, and it’s the first time you haven’t caved to the pout your sister gave when you told her.

You’re too busy, you’d said. You have deadlines to meet and New York is too far away to work from here. The friend who’s looking after your place goes on holiday this weekend and you have to help someone move on Friday. You wish you could stay longer, help her prep for her statistics class next semester and finally work out that tattoo she’s been wanting, but you can’t.

If you’re being honest, though, you could. You just don’t want to.

When your father comes down for dinner, he says his first words to you since you landed at the San Jose airport last night, and it’s nothing more than a thank you for setting the table. The forty minute car ride up to the house had been so silent and uncomfortable that even your mother’s usual prying couldn’t remedy it.

“I got the PA gig,” Jace announces excitedly when the mashed potatoes are done being passed around. “It’s at least twenty weeks of filming, too, and the production designer said he’d throw my name out to some of his friends in the industry. This is going to open doors like crazy for me.”

Clary rests her hand on his where it’s sitting on the table, squeezing gently, and your mother smiles at the two of them. “That’s great, Jace,” she says, and she sounds like she really means it. “That’s incredible.”

Leaning over to tap his plate with her fork, Isabelle narrows her eyes at him. The twist to her lips is teasing. “Don’t forget us when you’re a hotshot director living it up in Hollywood. I expect a regular delivery of Louis Vuitton’s straight to my doorstep.”

“Which will,” Jace abides, “of course, be right next door to me in Hollywood.”

“You have six pairs already, Isabelle,” your father shakes his head. “How could you possibly need any more?”

They laugh and the green beans are picked up to be passed around and the dinner progresses without you even having to say a word. Your family doesn’t ask about your job or your friends or the beautiful location of your condo or if you’ve started seeing anyone. You think they’re probably tired of getting the same answers each time. Or maybe they’ve memorized them so they don’t have to ask you to repeat yourself at every family reunion.

Throughout the meal, Jace and Clary don’t stop touching or smiling at each other and your parents don’t stop smiling or fawning over them. Your sister spends the dinner joking about her one math professor and casually dropping hints that she has a new boyfriend, though it’s nothing serious yet. Her boyfriends rarely are, except for that one in senior year that you’re not allowed to talk about.

You sit in the same seats you’ve sat in for the past twenty years, ever since your uncle dragged this dining set off a curb and into your home. Your mother had demanded it be escorted right back out the way it came, but your uncle had always had a charming smile and a way with words. He’d winked at you, hiding behind the kitchen door because you weren’t allowed into the room when people were yelling, and told her the house needed a little more character. Something borrowed to make all things new seem that much more glamorous. It had taken a week of grumbling and passive aggressive silences before she’d caved and said it could stay.

Now, Clary fills the seat that your uncle claimed when you sat down to dinner for the first time all those years ago. She takes up half the space he did, but her wild red hair and the strength of her laugh fills what her small frame doesn’t.

You help your mother clean up after, her washing and you drying in a rhythm you’ve had down since you were seven. You used to do this twice a day, at breakfast and dinner and sometimes lunch if you weren’t away at school, and at some point it became your thing. The two of you would stand side by side, falling into step with each other as easily as breathing, and you would share things that couldn’t be said without the steady sound of the water to muffle them.

For the first five minutes, you work in silence. It’s not until you’re running the damp rag around in circles over the mashed potato pot that she decides to break it.

“Alec,” she says, but doesn’t look at you because that isn’t how this works. Instead, she stares down at her hands and her bare nails as she scrubs a wine glass clean. You feel your chest constrict, but you’d braced for it as soon as you started gathering the dishes from the table.

“Are you happy?”

It’s not what you were expecting. You thought she would ask if you’d found someone yet or maybe how your novel was coming along, if you finished that painting you were working on the last time you visited. That’s usually what this moment is; the chance for her to ask you everything she can’t in front of anyone else.

_ Are you happy? _

You think of the rain on the windshield and your keys in the mud, hands shaking too hard to hold them.

Your nose fills with the stench of cheap beer and the clingy feeling of something indiscernible but definitely sticky, with the rich scent of that five dollar cologne you can only find at the drug store on fifth street.

You feel the grooves in the bathroom tiles digging into the skin of your cheek and the damp December mist clinging to your sweater, the canvas giving way beneath your fingers, the paint coming off under your nails.

Clary’s arrival has brought it all to the forefront of your mind, so when your mother asks if you’re happy, it’s all that you can think about.

You used to laugh so hard you thought your lungs might give out, and not just because they were weak from the smoke. You’d smile until your cheeks burned and the corners of your eyes ached. Your chest would feel so full and so alive that you’d hold it every night you snuck in through the bathroom window just to make sure it wasn’t going to burst open.

You don’t do that anymore. You’re not really sure when you stopped, whether it was before or after or because of, but you know it’s been years since you didn’t wake up feeling empty.

You’ve been quiet for too long, caught up thinking about things that don’t matter anymore, and your mother looks like she might be close to crying. You can remember, distantly, a time where she used to hold you in her arms and call you her baby, terrified to let you go and concerned every time you stayed out too late. It’s been awhile since she’s cared so openly about you.

“I’m fine,” you tell her, because you can’t bring yourself to lie and say you’re happy but you also couldn’t bear the look on her face if you told her the truth. You don’t know how she’d take it, but you know she’d either be upset or angry and you know you couldn’t stomach either one. “My novel’s coming along really well. I think I’m almost finished.”

You’re not. You haven’t written in three months, since your best friend told you she was getting married.

Your mother turns to look at you. It takes a moment, but she smiles in that tired, relieved way you’ve only ever seen a mother manage. Her hand is calloused and familiar as it comes to rest on your forearm, gripping tight before letting go. “I’m glad. I can’t wait to read it.”

You smile thinly back and turn again to the dishes, running the cloth over a bowl that’s already dry just for something to do with your hands. Your mother is never going to get to read it. You can’t imagine her taking the time to seek it out on her own any more than you can imagine finding the strength to give it to her yourself.

The thought of those calloused, familiar hands turning the pages of a novel that’s all about the life she doesn’t know you’ve had makes you sick to your stomach. You almost don’t want to send it to a publisher, but your editor is already expecting the next ten chapters and you can’t back out now.

“As soon as I’m done,” you assure her. “I’ll send you a copy.”

That night, you pull up the first draft and stare at the third heading. You imagine your mother reading it, drinking in the words and realizing that it isn’t as much a work of fiction as you’d like the world to believe. The table is in there, that ugly old piece of wood, and so is your uncle’s grey hair.

After the table, there is an entire section that’s blank where you kept pressing enter until the space felt big enough. You keep telling yourself you’re going to delete it, but you never do.

And then, after the blank space, there’s another four chapters before the text tapers off into oblivion. You stare at it, at the final period before the writer’s block set in, and try to bring yourself to start the next sentence.

You can’t, though, because it isn’t really writer’s block that’s keeping you from putting the rest to paper. It’s that stupid place in the back of your mind where you’ve buried everything and the densely packed dirt you covered it with that’s keeping you from unearthing it. Or maybe it’s just that when you imagine writing out what’s started filling your head again, you imagine someone reading it who isn’t your mother but used to matter just as much.

The thought terrifies you.

  
  


_ He’s blasting Guns N’ Roses again just to annoy you, because he knows you’ve never been a fan of the crazy vocal stylings in Welcome To The Jungle. You shake your head, laughing the smoke on your breath out the window, and grin when he shouts along to the chorus. _

_ You tap your cigarette into the ashtray on the console between his bouncing knee and your thigh. “Where are we even going?” you ask. You don’t think you really care, but you look at the clock and think that you probably should. It’s not even six AM. _

_ He grins at you, all sharp teeth and glimmering eyes. “Wherever the hell we want.” _

_ You snort, raising an eyebrow, and he laughs good-naturedly as he plucks the cigarette from your fingers and raises it to his lips. You want to kiss him and he knows it, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye and drumming his nails on the steering wheel. They’re painted black, the polish coming away in odd places. _

_ “Imagine the look on your parents’ faces when they wake up and realize you’re not there,” he goads, resting his arm on the edge of the open window and letting his hand be carried by the breeze whizzing past. The road is just as empty now as it was when you slipped into the passenger seat in the dark, only now you can see the telephone lines and taste the dirt in the air.  _

_ You smile and look away at the hills rolling by, so green and so infinite. Even when you close your eyes you can still feel them, like the possibility of freedom dancing all around you. What would it be like to live where you could see the earth? To live without the mansion and the expensive clothes and the flat screen TVs? Without all the superficial to mask what’s really going on? _

_ He notices you looking and follows your lead, slowing the car to point out the two lone cows grazing by the fenceline. You hum. He says, “One day, we’ll move out into the country and have a farm with a bunch of, like, fucking horses and shit. Just you and me and none of that other bullshit. We’ll live so far out in the middle of nowhere that your parents won’t even know where to look. They’ll never find us.” _

_ You turn to look at him and drink in the expression on his face. He’s grinning in that charming way he always does, but there’s an earnest force behind his eyes that takes your breath away. The cigarette is still smoking between the fingers of the arm that’s now draped across your headrest and you can smell it on his breath just as surely as you know he can smell it on yours. _

_ Your fingers are rough from use, but you grasp his cheek softly when you pull him in for a kiss. He tastes like the spearmint gum he bought at the gas station yesterday and the smoke that’s sitting in both your lungs. You can feel his breath on your cheek and your lips and in your mouth, hot and wet and present. Kissing him is always grounding. _

Just you and me, _ you think as you pull him closer. His arm falls from the headrest to your neck, and his other goes down to your waist. He pushes up under your shirt and you open your mouth to anchor yourself.  _ That wouldn’t be so bad.

  
  


Jace and Clary head out the following morning, packing their suitcases up in the back of Jace’s Chrysler 300. It looks ridiculous, but they’re both laughing as they struggle to fit everything in and Isabelle kisses their cheeks before they go. 

You watch from the living room, still perched on the couch when your sister sweeps back into the room. She pauses when she sees you, thinking for a moment before she makes her way over and sits down beside you. The cushions shift beneath her weight.

“You didn’t want to say goodbye?” she asks.

You shrug. “They looked like they were in a hurry.”

She frowns, her red lipstick making the curve of her mouth more pronounced. It’s clear she doesn’t accept that as a reason, but she also doesn’t push, so you don’t really care. You stare resolutely down at the book you’re not reading, refusing to fill the silence just for the sake of not sitting in it.

“When do you leave?” she asks.

You bite your lip. It’s Tuesday. Yesterday, you would’ve said you were leaving Friday, but things have changed since then. You sat through dinner with a sinking feeling in your stomach and fell asleep to a deeper emptiness than ever before. So instead you say, “Tonight, I guess. Sorry.”

You  _ are _ sorry. You always are when you disappoint the people around you, though it never stops you.

She sighs, slumping back into the cushions until her head is low enough to rest comfortably on your shoulder. She smells like some kind of perfume and, beneath that, a tangle of fall spices. “Can’t you stay a little longer? I haven’t seen you since the summer.”

Guilt is a perplexing emotion to you in that you feel it all the time but are still surprised every time you rediscover its existence. It comes to you now, sitting more heavily in your stomach than usual and briefly drawing your attention. Still, you shake your head. The guilt is not as sickening as everything else you feel when you’re standing in this house, sitting with your family and wishing to be anywhere else. “I’m sorry. Maybe you can come out and visit again in the spring, over your reading week. Like this summer, only it won’t matter that my AC doesn’t work.”

When you first moved in, you loved this place. You were six and still in love with life and your parents, still able to sing in the car and rush headfirst into new adventures. You remember the excitement of being able to smell the wood. You used to sit for hours and count the intricate flowers carved into every baseboard.

You wonder sometimes if that’s just the way life is. If everything new and beautiful is eventually tainted by all the shittiness life has to offer or if the passage of time just wears away at it until it’s ordinary again. In your experience, it does.

Isabelle smiles, a real one, and wraps her arm around yours. She reminds you so much of a younger version of herself that for a second you forget the woman she’s become. “You really need to get that fixed,” she laughs, nudging your shoulder with her own. “And my reading week’s in February.”

You laugh with her, though it doesn’t have the same fullness hers does. Isabelle has always been able to fill a room just with her presence. “I’ve been busy.”

She shakes her head, but she sounds fond. “It’s just one phone call, Alec.”

You smile and go back to staring at your book. She pats your shoulder one last time before rising from the couch, leaving you to your reading. You watch her long hair sway over the small of her back and wonder what she would say if you told her that phone calls are hard for you now. They take so much energy and you can never build up enough to press the button.

Later that night, you catch her hair between your fingertips as you hug her goodbye and you picture it again. You think of the girl you used to be able to tell your secrets to and you wonder what she would say if you told them to her now. You think she would hold you and laugh at the funny parts and stroke your hair at all the rest, but you can’t be sure. The memory of her is getting harder and harder to hold onto.

That girl doesn’t exist anymore, anyway. All that’s left of her is her long, raven hair, the only thing that wasn’t thrown out with the Barbies and cheap blue eyeliner. Even her eyes are different now, sharp where they used to be warm.

“I’ll see you in February,” you tell her like you mean it. You wish for it so hard that you almost do.

She grins into your shoulder, pulling away so the damp December air can bridge the gap between you. “In February, for sure,” she agrees. She pats your cheek in a way that would be condescending if she wasn’t a full head shorter than you and standing barefoot in the driveway. “Give Jace a call, would you? Try to be happy for him. You’ll find someone too, Alec. Then you’ll get it.”

You shake your head in a way that she probably takes as fond exasperation but is really an affirmation that you won’t. You aren’t going to find someone, you know that, and you’ll never understand how people can love so easily. How it can be so easy to be in love.

You had someone, once, and you loved them so much that it hurt. It  _ hurt _ . You think of the stars and his skin and the taste of salt on his lips and you wish you could understand how something like that could ever be easy.

The car ride back to the airport is even more silent and uncomfortable this time, on the account that your mother said she was tired and didn’t want to make the trip. Your father sits stonily in the driver’s seat and you stare out the window at the black hills rolling past. You can’t see the telephone lines, and you want to put the radio on just to fill the silence, but you know your father would just turn it off again.

You make it back to New York in the early hours of the morning, stumbling into your empty flat with nothing but the sound of your key in the door to welcome you home. It’s just the way you left it — Lydia knows better than to touch anything but the plants sitting on the kitchen island and the contents of your fridge — and you can still taste paint when you breathe.

The living room is covered in bits of canvas. Most of it is painted in varying hues of deep purple and black, but there are some strips that are coated in bright orange and stick out like sore thumbs. You stare at the mess and pick at your nails, leaving your suitcase by the front door. Robotically, you grab the broom from the storage closet and set to work.

It doesn’t take long — it was only one canvas, though it was a large one — and eventually you’re left with nothing to occupy you but systematically sifting through the pieces of the painting that you’ve gathered. You’re sure there’s still some missing, wedged under the couch or into the corner, but it doesn’t really matter. They are all rough and familiar in your hands and you run your fingers along every edge until the pads of your fingertips have become numb to the feeling.

There is one piece, long and skinny and cut from just the right part, that is still recognizable for what it used to be. The feathers at the top of the crow’s head are cut off, but its eye is piercing and the figure of the man reflected in it is undamaged.

You tear it straight through the pupil and then five more times until you can look at it and stop seeing him.

  
  


_ The streetlamps seem brighter than usual as you slip out onto the road. You hug your jacket tighter around yourself, never fully prepared for how cold it gets at night no matter how long you’ve lived here. The air is wet and heavy from the day’s rain, but thankfully it’s nothing more than a few drops now. You’re damp nonetheless by the time you reach the car, tugging at the stuck handle of the sedan until it finally gives way and lets you yank the door open. It closes with a resounding thud behind you. _

_ He looks at you. His eyebrows are raised expectantly and you look anywhere but him, picking at the chipped plastic of the dashboard. The silence is deafening on the account of you knowing that he’s waiting for you to fall apart already. Tiredly, you remind yourself that it’s what he’s always waiting for. _

_ “You okay?” he asks, because he wouldn’t be him if he didn’t. You only look over because you want to reassure him that you’re perfectly fine, but the second you meet his eyes you know you can’t lie. _

_ He shakes his head. He looks angry, pulling his lips tight and staring out the windshield at the dead street. His hands are fists against the steering wheel, and he doesn’t say anything as he puts the car into drive and pulls away from your house. You watch him nervously in the dark. _

_ You’ve been driving aimlessly for ten minutes when you feel obligated to say, “They’re not bad people.” _

_ He glances at you in disbelief before deliberately forcing his eyes back to the road, squinting out at it as his knuckles go white. “Not bad people,” he mocks, scoffing under his breath. “They’re pieces of  _ shit  _ and you deserve better.” _

_ You shrug. You pull at the sleeves of your jacket, letting your head fall back against the headrest and closing your eyes for a minute. You’re so tired. You feel like you could sleep for days and still not want to get up in the morning. _

_ It’s quiet for longer than you can keep track of. _

_ “Hey,” he says. He sounds softer this time, less angry. You pull your eyes open to look at him, but you don’t move your head. He’s staring at you from the corner of his eye, his mouth pliant with concern and gaze heavy with uncertainty. “Why don’t you come stay with me for a while? Get away for a bit?” _

_ You bite your lip to keep from saying anything. You didn’t know your chest could ache this much, but it does and for a moment the pain is so unbearable that you can’t breathe around it. You want it so bad that you don’t know what to do with it. You think of what it would be like to wake every morning with your chest against his back and spend every day wrapped up in him. _

A while _ , you think.  _ I couldn’t do a while. It would have to be forever.

_ Shaking your head, you give him a drained smile. He sighs heavily, but reaches out to take your hand over the console. He brings your clasped hands to his lips and presses a kiss to your thumb, his breath ghosting your skin and sending shivers down your spine. Even across the car you can smell the smoke on his lips. _

_ “Where are we going?” you ask him. It’s earlier than you would usually meet, so you have to be back before anyone notices you’re gone. It’s only half past ten, which means you have about an hour before your parents do their room checks. _

_ He grins. “Wherever the hell we want,” he says, like he does every time you ask. The first time, it had left you feeling uneasy and uncertain as you struggled not to take up too much room in the passenger seat. Now, you smile fondly and hold his hand tighter, propping your knee up on the dashboard and closing your eyes again. _

_ “Don’t worry, baby,” he whispers, just as you’re starting to drift off. “You’ll get out of there soon. And then you’ll never have to go back.” _

  
  


Your mother calls three days after you left her, her voice soft over the phone as someone watches reality TV in the background. There’s a lot of shouting and you think it must be Isabelle because you can’t imagine either of your parents tuning into the latest episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

She tells you that your sister was upset you left so early, that your father really  _ was _ hoping to spend more time with you, but that she understands and she hopes your work is going well. You know that she’s lying for your benefit — your father has never missed a chance to avoid spending time with you — and you’d appreciate the effort if it hadn’t taken you so much just to pick up the phone.

She’s been calling more often lately. You’re not sure why, but it started around September so you think Isabelle probably told her something when she got back from spending the summer with you in New York. You used to lie awake at night and wonder what she could’ve said, what’s changed recently that could warrant their sudden concern, but you always drew a blank so you eventually stopped trying.

You thought your sister had enjoyed her time. You thought you’d smiled enough and laughed enough and gone out enough to make up for the two years in college you didn’t see her, and the three after. The way your mother carefully says she loves you before hanging up the phone tells you that you hadn’t.

Or maybe Isabelle just forgot what you were like and seeing it again was a shock, in the way that spending every day with someone and then coming back to them weeks later and realizing you don’t like them after all is a shock.

You leave your phone on the kitchen counter, facedown with the LED light flashing blue. The bathroom is ensuite, so you have to pace across the hardwood floor of your bedroom to reach it. When you close the door behind you, the rest of the world cuts off like you’ve severed a cord strung at maximum tension. Slowly, you sink to the floor and stare at the toilet. With your legs stretched out across the cream tiles, your feet brush the edge of it.

_ Are you happy? _

You might’ve been, once. You almost were. A lifetime ago, your room was painted blue instead of grey and you wore new clothes instead of old. You cared about whether the shirt you threw on made you look good, whether your hair was right, and you drew a panther above your bed in charcoal and felt-tipped pen.

If you close your eyes, you can feel the distant memory of the sun on the side of your neck and your bare shoulder. A hand traces the muscles of your arm and you bury your head deeper into the pillows, smiling in spite of yourself. There is warmth at your back and hot breath on your cheek and the air is filled with laughter. There’s something quieter surrounding you, too, but in the memory you don’t have a name for it yet.

You have not shared your secrets with anyone in a very long time, but there used to be a place you could go where the truth didn’t matter. Where the past was just the roadmap that led you to the present.

Are you happy? The short answer is no. The long answer is that happiness is an even more complex idea than guilt. You have been safe and you have been comfortable and you have maybe even been loved, but happy is a word that you’ve always struggled to assign a meaning to.

You sit and stare at the toilet, your head pounding and your bones heavy, and you think again of the blank page that awaits you on the screen of your dead laptop. There is still a blank space between bringing the ugly table into your new home and that time your brother took your mom’s car for a joyride. Your mind catches for a second, trying to process what it might be like to fill it, but then it skips and lands on the second blank space instead.

You could fill it with how he always tasted like spearmint and smoke, his two favourite things besides his car and your eyes. You could fill it with the smell of the exhaust on another dry summer day or the crackle as the radio gave out midway through the chorus of Mr. Brightside. You could fill it with him, or with you, or with who you were when you were together.

Except that you can’t. He is one of only two secrets you’ve never told a single soul. It’s too late to start now.

  
  


_ You can hear him shuffling on the bed beside you, but you keep your eyes closed. The heat is awful and the cheap fan he bought last week is aimed right at your face, so you can’t bring yourself to move. You should probably take your jacket off, but it’s hard to work up the nerve and easy to just lay here for a while instead. You spent all of yesterday helping your mother rearrange the living room. Every muscle in your body aches. _

_ It sounds like a plastic bag is being rifled through and you figure he must be inspecting what he bought on the way back to his place. The bed creaks as he throws himself a little further up it, the mattress dipping towards him. _

_ “ _ Aqua Velva _ ,” he reads out loud. There’s the distinct clacking of something being unscrewed. He sounds perplexed when he says, “Minty. Or maybe woody?” He hums. A moment later, a strong odour fills your nose. “What do you think?” _

_ You open your eyes. He’s holding the cheap bottle of aftershave he bought at the drugstore earlier out to you, poised under your nose and dangerously close to spilling all over you. You give him a withering look, but take a good whiff nonetheless. “Minty,” you decide. “It smells like something my grandpa would wear.” _

_ He withdraws it from your face, screwing the cap back on and tossing it across the room. It lands on one of the many blankets strewn across the small space, every inch of his bedroom decked out for optimum comfort. “I’ll use it.” _

_ You snort, turning your head back towards the fan. It’s wedged precariously into the space between his bed and the wall, held up by sheer force of will as it rattles back and forth. You close your eyes, feeling the breeze stir your eyelashes and the hair on your forehead. Sweat drips down the back of your neck. _

_ Bored, he drapes himself across you and props his chin up on your chest, his torso twisted at an awkward angle. He frowns at the fan like it’s offended him somehow and then pulls himself up just enough to kiss you. His lips are chapped from working on his car all day yesterday, trying to get the brakes to stop screeching. It’s been making it hard for you to sneak out. _

_ Humming, you run your hand down his back and feel the ridges of his spine. He’s always had a lithe figure, but there’s no denying the tone of his muscles or the strength of his body. You will never not be fascinated by how well he can use it. _

_ “Alec,” he states as he pulls away, his head coming to rest on your chest again. He says it in a way that tells you there’s something else coming. You should pay attention. _

_ You have to crook your neck up at an awkward angle to look at him. He traces your collarbone with his index finger. “Do you really think your family would care?” _

_ You take a deep breath. The air feels like it’s lacking oxygen as you inhale and his body is moved by the swift rise of your chest. _

_ By family, you know he means your siblings because nothing you’ve ever told him about your parents could make him think they wouldn’t care that you’re seeing him. You have to close your eyes for a second just to sort out the short circuit in your brain, focusing on the dips in his lower back and the way your fingers feel running across them. _

_ “I don’t know,” you tell him honestly. You keep your eyes closed. You don’t feel like you have the energy to open them, no matter how much you want to see the way he’s looking at you. You’ve just been so exhausted lately. _

_ He shifts against you, folding his palms beneath his chin to take some of the pressure off. “You don’t talk much about your siblings,” he observes. _

_ You sigh. _

_ Lately, you don’t know where you stand with Jace and Izzy. They’re so much different now than they used to be and you don’t know how to treat them when you no longer have to take care of them. Not only that, but all this sneaking around and time away from them has made a distance grow in the vast halls of your house that didn’t used to be so pronounced. There are other things, too, but it’s easier to tell yourself that’s all it is. _

_ You don’t have the energy to explain that complex and fragile dynamic to him, though. You’re not even sure how to put it into words without revealing to him the secrets that you’re not ready to voice out loud. _

_ “Max wouldn’t,” you tell him instead, and then clarify, “Care, I mean. But he’s ten, so that doesn’t really count.” _

_ He’s giving you a look. You can feel it, even though you can’t see it. His breath fans across the exposed skin of your neck and his hand moves from your collarbone to your hair. You can smell grease on him, like he’s sweating it out in the summer heat. _

_ “We’ll send him letters then. Just him.” _

_ You raise an eyebrow, finally opening your eyes to look at him. He’s smiling in that crooked way that takes your breath away every time, igniting something hot and exhilarating in the base of your stomach. _

_ “Letters?” you repeat, humouring him. _

_ He nods. “When we get out of this fucking place and leave it all behind. Everyone else can kiss our dust, but we’ll send Max letters every now and then. Keep in touch. He’ll have to promise not to share them, though. The rest of those shitheads deserve to be cut off cold turkey from all of this,” he declares, gesturing vaguely down the length of your body. _

_ You laugh and he shakes with you, grinning delightfully at the crinkles around your eyes. You know your expression must be horribly sappy and too far gone to be directed at a guy you’ve only known a few months, but you don’t care. He makes you feel warm like nothing ever has. Even the cold, secret parts of you that no one has ever been allowed to touch are moved when you’re with him. _

_ “Are you asking me to run away with you?” you whisper softly once the laughter has died and all that’s left is the warmth and the weight of him on top of you.  _

_ He smiles, a private one this time, and brushes the sweat slick hair from your forehead. “Who said anything about asking?” he murmurs just as gently. _

_ You smile back, even though your chest is aching with want. “I’d like that,” you admit. _

_ This time when he kisses you, it’s so soft that you don’t even notice how chapped his lips are or the heavy smell of grease from the sedan. _

  
  


You’ve known Maia since your last year of college when you shared a table at the library during finals. She’s always been a bit unpredictable, a bit of a free spirit, and you’ve always loved her for how easily she can ground herself in a storm.

Today is a good example of that. You know she must be scared on some level, but her smile is as wide and knowing as it always is when she welcomes you into the apartment. There’s boxes sprawled out everywhere, the whole living room a chaotic mess of packing paper and guitars.

“I’m almost done gathering everything, I just need your help boxing it up and getting it to the car,” she informs you as you follow her to the centre of the mayhem. She’s wearing a loose t-shirt and jeans, her hair unstyled and makeup flawless, and you are trying not to stare. It’s just that you can’t fathom how she can be so put together with her entire world falling apart around her.

Maybe that’s not fair. Jordan wasn’t her entire world. That’s the whole reason you’re here.

“When will he be back?” you ask, tugging a box out from under all the rest. There’s two books tucked neatly away in the bottom already, so you fold yourself onto the floor beside the remaining stack and start packing.

She’s disappeared into the kitchen already, the clang of dishes being pulled from the cupboards ringing out into the living room. “Ten, I think.”

You run your hands down the cover of an old copy of  _ The Count of Monte Cristo _ . You lent it to her in college when she was suffering through boring lectures for participation grades. It was just small enough to fit in her purse and just entertaining enough to drone out the professor’s monotone voice.

Maia comes back into the room just as you’re packing it away. She peers at it over your shoulder, pulling a box from one of the taller piles and holding a frying pan in her hand. She hums. “You can have that back, if you want.”

You shake your head. “I don’t need it.”

You work in silence for an hour and in that time the air conditioning becomes ineffective and you have to pull off your jacket. You still have your shoes on because it seemed pointless to take them off and you don’t think Maia cares about a carpet she’s never going to see again.

You can feel her beside you as you tape another box shut, quiet in her own work but contemplating something you know nothing about. Her presence feels suddenly louder, in that way a presence always does just before it makes itself known.

“Alec,” she says, a little uncertainly. She doesn’t sound anything like the confident, take-no-shit woman who sat with you and Lydia in your fourth year business lab, but she does still sound like herself. People are complicated like that, you know. There are always a thousand different versions of them.

You glance at her, inviting her to continue, and then turn back to the sheets you’re piling into a suitcase. It’s hard to look at her like this, to know that she is hurting and that this is all you can do to make it stop.

“Do you…” she starts and then trails off. The staple gun makes a piercing noise. “Do you believe in soulmates?”

It isn’t the first time she’s asked. Once, just after you’d graduated and before you’d finished putting all your paintings in a box, you’d lain on your new mattress and told her there was more than one person she could be with. She had a bruise on her shoulder and a look in her eyes like she was going to go back to him anyway, and you hadn’t known what to say to keep her from it.

She had gone back to him anyway, as she did each time she left, and you had wondered for months if you’d said the wrong thing. It had taken a long time to realize that there was nothing you could have said to stop her. Love has always been illogical and, really, you should know that better than most.

Now, finally going that extra step of packing up all her things and walking out the door for good, you still can’t find the right words. You are good at sitting with your friends in silence and pretending not to notice that they’re losing the strong front they put on, your arm around their shoulder and your eyes turned away to let them fall apart in peace. You are good at gathering their belongings for them and holding their hand as they walk out the door, that silent anchor urging them out of the storm and into the sea, but you are not good at telling them what they want to hear. It’s so hard to find the hidden meaning in their words, to figure out what they’re really asking.

You don’t even bother this time. “No,” you tell her, standing. You prop the suitcase up near the door, glancing at the three large boxes stacked beside it. There is a finality in the air that was never there when you’d make the couch up for her to sleep on.

She runs her hands over the last box, smoothing out the tape and staring at the cardboard. There is a bruise on her neck, old and half healed, but her hands are steady.

“Have you ever been in love?” she asks you, though she already knows the answer. You wonder why everyone is so concerned with your love life all of a sudden. Are all your secrets catching up to you or have you just reached that point in your life where it’s starting to seem strange?

You run a hand down your face. She asked you back in college if you were interested in anyone and, when you told her that you weren’t, if you’d ever had a girlfriend. Lydia had been sitting beside you and softly corrected her to boyfriend. You’d shaken your head and said you just didn’t care for a relationship. Maia had hummed and asked if you were aromantic or something, a word you’d never heard before, and you’d told her with a heavy breath that you didn’t know.

It’s strange, you think. You are known for being direct to the point that it’s now a running joke among your friends, and yet the lies slip off your tongue so easily you don’t even have to think about them. If you did, your only thought would be that they are often easier than honesty.

Except that now you are staring down at your friend’s life tucked away in three boxes and a suitcase and all you can think is that you have seen everything she owns. You have kept all her secrets and seen every skeleton in her closet and she has let you because Maia has never been afraid of the truth, even when it hurts. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why it has taken you four years to be standing here, in a half-empty apartment at noon because you didn’t want to risk not being done by the time Jordan gets back from work.

You can’t tell her all your secrets or show her all your skeletons and there are still two blank spaces in your unfinished novel, but maybe you are tired of the confused frowns every time you tell them you’re still not interested in anyone.

Or maybe you are terrified that this won’t be the end. That you’ll pack up all her things and settle her into an apartment halfway across the city and she’ll still end up back here, suffocating between these walls. Maybe there is a niggling part of you that thinks your words have never worked on her because she doesn’t believe that there is anything behind them.

“Yes,” you say. You don’t look at her, but you know she’s looking at you. You can feel the shock in the room and the questions she wants to ask, but you don’t want this to feel as big as it is. You want this to be about her instead of you. Partly because it’s easier that way, but partly because you’ve spent four years counting every bruise you could see and wondering if it would make her feel better to know that even a painful kind of love shouldn’t hurt like this.

You scrape your nails along the edge of a box, the cardboard coming away under your nails. “And he never had to hit me to keep me.”

“But he didn’t,” she murmurs. When you turn your head to look at her, she is staring at the carpet with her legs folded under her. She looks beautiful, the sunlight sneaking through the curtains and onto her skin. She’s always been beautiful. You have never understood how someone could want to take that from her. “He didn’t keep you. And you’re miserable without him.”

People find their own truths and, in the end, they hear what they want to hear. You are almost mad for a second that she could so easily attribute all your problems to something she knows nothing about, but you are not selfish enough to ignore the way she’s hurting. How many times have you told her not to go back to him? How many times has she told you that she can’t stand to be without him? Decisions are easier to justify when you can project them onto someone else and claim it as proof of the outcome you desire.

You take a soft breath. Standing in what used to be her apartment, your shoes on and the car out front, you have never felt further away from the boy in the passenger seat of that old sedan. Like your sister, you have lost the pieces of who you used to be and become someone else entirely. You wonder if she tried to hold onto that girl who built blanket forts with you as you have tried to hold onto that boy who laughed the smoke out of his lungs.

You are not that boy and she is not that girl and Maia is not the girl who sat with you in your business lab anymore, either.

“Sometimes we have to let people go,” you tell her. “No matter how much we love them. Love isn’t the most important thing.”

“Then what is?” she asks.

You frown. You don’t know. Happiness, maybe, but you’ve never had that. “Whatever’s best for you,” you say instead. “For everyone. And staying with Jordan doesn’t do anyone any good.”

She looks at you. She looks sad and you think, _ there it is _ . She is grounded, but she is also not oblivious to the storm around her.

“I know that,” she admits in the softest voice you have ever heard from her. Her eyes find the boxes beside you, the suitcase beside them. “This time, I know that.”

  
  


_ “They’ve never hit me,” you say. You feel like you need to. Guilt claws at your stomach at the notion that you’ve given him the wrong idea. _

_ He looks at you. Summer is still clinging to the trees, but it’s night and nearly fall so the windows are fogged up with condensation and the cold. Your leather jacket does nothing to keep the chill out, but you like the shiver it sends down your spine. _

_ “Alec,” he says, sounding tired. You’re tired, too. You’re always tired. “Abuse isn’t just getting knocked around.” _

_ You almost laugh, but you stop yourself. You know that better than you know anything else. _

  
  


“You look well,” Lydia greets warmly, kissing your cheek before sliding into the chair opposite you. Her hair is pulled up in an elegant braid, her makeup immaculate but hardly noticeable, and she’s glowing in a way you thought only existed between the pages of the sappiest romance novels.

You set your menu off to the side, unwrapping your utensils from their napkin. “So do you. How’s John?”

She smiles in that quietly lovesick way that makes you both happy for her and sick to your stomach at the same time. Love suits her, you’ve noticed in the two years she’s been seeing her now fiancé. You still remember holding her in your college dorm room as she cried over her first breakup. You’re glad that those days seem to be behind her.

“He wants to get married in Minnesota, same as his parents,” she informs you, taking a sip of her water. She flips the menu open, runs her eyes quickly down the page, and then closes it and neatly stacks it on top of yours. She always orders the same thing. “I’m not sure that I like Virginia. I’d always imagined getting married in the winter, with the snow. Maybe up in the mountains somewhere.”

You hum, folding your hands in front of you on the table as the waiter comes over to take your order. It gives you a chance to gather your thoughts before you have to tell Lydia what you think, and it’s needed. You’d braced yourself before leaving your condo, but it’s still hard to quench the sickness in your stomach with water and smile through the pain.

There was a time — only once, before you pushed it away and told yourself not to be ridiculous — where you’d imagined your own wedding. There had even been a time where you’d thought that you’d be married by now, living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, far away from all of this. Far away from everything and everyone but him.

You have become so good at smiling through the pain that Lydia only beams brightly back when you do. You lean a little closer across the table, trying to push aside your feelings to focus on your best friend and this incredible thing that’s happening for her.

“Banff, maybe?” you suggest, tapping your fingers along the edge of your water glass. The condensation comes off under your touch, leaving your hand wet.

Lydia makes a thoughtful noise. “That’s not a bad idea, actually.”

You grin, laughing. “Thanks.”

“You know what I meant,” she snorts, smacking as high up on your arm as she can comfortably reach. 

You fall into easy silence after that, the kind only friends who have known each other for years can manage. You aren’t as close as you could be because you aren’t very good at sharing your secrets, but she’s still one of the very few people you can be with and not feel like your lungs are going to cave in. She sat with you through the panic attacks you had in college, too, and that brought you closer together even though you lied and told her you’d stopped having them.

You can’t tell her about him the same way you told Maia, though, because Maia was bound to the pact of shared silent suffering and Lydia is not. You also don’t think you’ll ever be able to say any more about him other than that you loved him and it ended.

Halfway through lunch, Lydia gives you a cautious look and sets her fork down. The sound of it clanging against the table is loud in the middle of your silence, though she does it as gently as she does everything else. You raise your eyes to hers, but look away when you see the kindness on her face.

“Victor asked about you,” she says cautiously, her eyes not leaving yours even though you’ve trained them on the table. “I think he really likes you, Alec.”

You hold your breath for a long moment, staring at a scratch in the table’s surface. The place has a vintage feel to it, all aged wood and kettles from the sixties. It’s a small café no more than a fifteen minute walk from your place, and you and Lydia have been coming here since you were fresh out of college and looking for something to make you feel less lost. The waiters know you, if not by name then by smile, nodding kindly each time they catch your eye.

“Lydia,” you say carefully. It isn’t a warning because you’re too tired to rehash an age old argument, but it’s close.

She has the decency to look the slightest bit apologetic, but she doesn’t take back her words nor try to change the subject. Instead, she sits with you in heavy silence as you try to decide if it’s worth it to fight it out after all.

Victor has been asking about you for awhile now. You almost dated once when you were just a few months away from becoming a college graduate, but you’d backed out at the last minute and told him you just weren’t looking for anyone. He’d been nice about it, agreeing that with finals coming up and his international internship for the summer it probably wasn’t the right time after all, but he’d also taken it to mean that there would be a right time for you eventually. You hadn’t mentioned it to any of your friends and, thankfully, it seemed that he hadn’t either.

You didn’t see him for three years after graduating, but about a year ago Lydia started at the company he’s now a partner to and he’s been an occasional presence in your life ever since. You think he and Lydia are closer than she lets on, but you always think Lydia is better friends with people than she is. It’s probably because you’re waiting for her to realize she can do so much better than you.

The thing is, though, that four years ago when you told him you weren’t looking for anyone, you hadn’t meant ‘at the moment’. You’d meant that you didn’t think you would ever be looking for anyone. You’d meant that you’d already found someone and you’d lost them and you’d learned your lesson from it.

Lydia doesn’t understand that, mostly because you’ve never really tried to explain it to her. You’ve never tried to explain it to anyone. That ache in your chest, that packed dirt in the back of your head, is private and ineffable. It exists only when you have a paint brush between your fingers or, more recently, when you’re looking at all the happy people around you and wondering where you went so wrong.

Maia doesn’t count. The ache exists in dark places and her old apartment was as dark as they come.

“I just don’t want a relationship,” you sigh, pushing your lunch away as your appetite leaves you.

Lydia frowns like she doesn’t believe you, folding her arms on the table and resting her palms flat against her forearms. She gives you a soft look, the same kind she gave as you broke down in the library right before your psych midterm. “Alec,” she says tiredly, but not unkindly. “I’ve known you for over eight years now and in that time you haven’t been on a single date. I’m not saying you have to want to, or that there’s anything wrong with not wanting to be romantically involved. That’s fine if that’s what makes you happy, but Alec… I just— You’re  _ not _ happy and you won’t tell me why and I can’t help but think that maybe you’re lonely.”

_ Lonely. _

You stare at her, blinking hard and wondering how to respond because being lonely is such a small thing in your life that it barely even registers.

Lonely? You have spent your whole life surrounded by people. Growing up with three siblings who all had countless friends and a stay-at-home mom and an uncle who spent more time with your family than he did his own, you were almost never alone no matter the hour or the place. You used to tell your mom you weren’t feeling well just so you could get out of the busy family dinner and sit quietly in your room instead. You used to go for walks as far as your legs could take you just to get away from all the people.

You’ve been lonely for so long you can’t even remember when it started. The problem with being surrounded by people is that it’s easy not to be attached to any of them. It’s easy to fade into the background, to watch them all share things with each other and be the only one left with no room to add to the conversation. It’s easy for a lot of things to happen. For a lot to go unnoticed.

When you were twelve, you cried yourself to sleep every night for two months until you remembered that you loved yourself and that was enough. You didn’t need anyone else to care about you, though it’d be nice if they did.

When you were nine, you pulled the covers over your head, squeezed your eyes shut so hard everything went white, and held out hope that someone would care enough to creak open your bedroom door and yank the sheets down. You had ground your teeth and imagined someone’s fingers combing through your hair, gentle and loving, and told yourself that the dream of it was just as good as the reality. As long as it happened in your head, it didn’t matter if it was true.

You’ve been lonely for so long that it’s just a part of who you are, a part of your existence. You aren’t unhappy because you’re lonely. You’ve been close to happy in spite of it before.

“I appreciate your concern,” you tell Lydia. You reach across the table and take her hand in yours, running your thumb over her knuckles to reassure her. Her skin is soft beneath your touch, but you can feel the callouses from when she used to play the violin. “But I’m fine, really. I have you and I have my friends and that’s more than enough. I just want to focus on my career, you know? On myself.”

She still looks hesitant to accept and move on, but she lets out a breath and squeezes your hand. Her expression is earnest and loving, a combination she’s had mastered for as long as you’ve known her. “Okay. Okay, I understand. But… Alec, you know you can always talk to me about anything, right? Whatever you need, I would never judge you.”

You shake your head, smiling in a way you hope is comforting. It’s the lopsided little thing that worked when you were trying to get her to stop crying about her second less-than-stellar boyfriend. “I know. But really, that’s all it is.” You shrug for good measure, hoping that the more unconcerned you seem, the less concerned she’ll be. “The idea of a relationship just doesn’t appeal to me right now.”

Lydia smiles, the fond one this time, and it puts your pounding heart at ease to know that you’ve successfully reassured her that everything is fine. You don’t even feel guilty about lying to her anymore. You think that probably wore off somewhere near the end of college.

“Well, then,” she declares, uncrossing her arms and drumming her hands against the table. “Let’s get some dessert and decide how I’m going to break the news to Victor.”

  
  


_ The heat is stifling this summer and so dry that your throat started hurting a few weeks in and hasn’t stopped since. You use the bottom of your t-shirt to wipe the sweat off of your brow, breathing heavily as the door chimes to announce your presence. You have to close your eyes for a second and thank the world for air conditioning before you can even think about moving. _

_ You peer around the store. It’s poorly stocked, but you hadn’t been expecting much from a gas station out in the middle of nowhere, so it’s already more than you could’ve hoped for. There’s a wall of refrigerators at the back, drawing you in like a moth to the flame. Fuck, water has never looked better. _

_ You grab three bottles and a Twix bar just for good measure, then make your way up to the cash to pay. The girl working it looks less than unimpressed, leaning lazily against the counter and letting her eyes slip shut like she can’t bear to keep them open. Sweat glistens on your skin, and you wonder how she can be overheated when she’s fortunate enough to have the AC blasting all day long. Your car’s broke three days ago and you haven’t had the time to get it fixed yet. _

_ There’s only one other person in the store; another guy about your age dressed in ripped skinny jeans and a leather jacket. Just looking at him makes you feel like you’ve got secondhand heatstroke. _

_ “Will that be all?” the girl asks him, ripping off his receipt and handing it to him before he’s even had the chance to respond. He smiles charmingly, a little flirty, and gracefully accepts. _

_ “That’s all. Thanks, darling.” _

_ The girl rolls her eyes, but seems a little less done with the world. He grins one last time and then steps off to the side when he catches sight of you. You take up the offer and move up to the till, setting your water and chocolate bar on the counter. _

_ “Long trip?” the guy asks, nodding at the three bottles. _

_ You follow his gaze as the girl moodily scans their barcodes, shrugging. “My car’s AC is out. I’m fucking hot.” _

_ He looks you over. “I’ll say,” he replies cheekily, but then sees the way you’re staring at him and laughs. “Relax. It was a joke.” _

_ You look at him for another long minute, until the girl clears her throat and waves the credit card machine in your face. You blink, taking it and cringing at putting a ten dollar purchase on a MasterCard, and try not to make a face when the girl unceremoniously shoves your bag of necessities at you. The guy is pretending to inspect the four different flavours of gum when you turn back to him. _

_ You raise your eyebrows. “Is it that hard to decide?” _

_ “What?” he says, blinking. When you nod your head towards the gum, he blinks again with a short laugh. “Oh, yeah. Right. I’m… debating the merits of spearmint versus polar ice.” _

_ You don’t comment on the fact that he’s already made whatever purchase he came in here for, nor the fact that he’s openly checking out your arms. You tilt up one corner of your mouth, teeth showing and everything, and reach over to shove a pack of spearmint Stride towards him. _

_ “Tastes better,” is all you say. _

_ “Yeah?” he grins. “You wanna test that?” _

_ You hum. “Since you’re offering,” you say, and snap a piece from the pack before he has a chance to say anything. You’re grinning, too. You can’t help it. _

_ He laughs again. It’s full and unashamed, all sharp teeth and bright eyes, and you find you’re even more compelled by it than you were by the promise of cold water. Your sister has a laugh like that, the kind that can fill a whole room. _

_ “That’s not what I meant,” he admits, tossing two bucks at the girl glaring at you from behind the register. He stuffs the rest of his money back in the front pocket of his jeans, throwing his bag into his other hand. It makes a clanging sound and you note that it’s full of tall cans. _

_ “I know,” you reply, moving past him to the door. The spearmint is sharp on your tongue, burning where you bit into your cheek earlier, and the taste is almost as refreshing as you’re sure the water will be. The trip back is just over an hour, but you weren’t sure you could make it with the way you’d started sticking to the seat. _

_ He gives you a mischievous look and makes to follow you out of the store. He waves three fingers at the girl, but she must not wave back because a second later he’s shaking his head. There’s a blue streak in his hair, faded and indistinct. _

_ The hot air rushes back over you in a haze of suffocating heat. It seems like there’s nothing around for miles except dirt and the three cars parked out front. Your Ford Fiesta, a gleaming Mazda, and a shitbox sedan with a duct taped window and a license plate holding onto its broken tailgate for dear life. _

_ “Tell me you don’t actually drive that thing,” you can’t help but blurt out when you realize your new friend is making his way over to it. He glances back at you over his shoulder and then to his car and then to you again, shrugging like he doesn’t see the problem. _

_ “It’s got character.” _

_ You shake your head, wiping away the sweat gathering on your forehead already. You’re parked on the other side of the makeshift lot, which is really just a square of dirt with a little less dead grass than the rest of the region. You turn your back to him, pulling your keys out of your pocket. Izzy painted the back of them with red nail polish to match the car and some of it comes away on your hand now. “Your funeral, buddy.” _

_ Your own car is, admittedly, not a work of art. It’s not actually yours, either. It used to be your mom’s, but she traded it out for a brand new Lexus after driving this one nearly into the ground. It has close to three hundred thousand miles on it and one of the back doors doesn’t open from when Jace ran it off the road while driving high, despite not having his license. You play chauffeur to your siblings, too, so the inside is a cluttered mess of spare makeup and Eminem CDs. _

_ You’re just about to pull open the door when the guy calls back across the parking lot, “Do you want a drink?” _

_ You squint at him through the dirt and the heatwaves you’re sure must be there. He’s holding his white plastic bag up by his head, waving it enticingly as he leans against the open door of his beater. It’s beige. You’re sure it must be a model from the 70s and that it hasn’t undergone any maintenance since. _

_ You think for a second. You’re supposed to be back before five so that you can take your sister and her friend to the movies. It’s four and you’re still an hour and a half away, which means you’re already late. They don’t have to go today; you’re sure the movie will be playing four times a day for the next month, so they’ll have plenty of time to be pissed and then beg for a ride again in a week or two. _

_ You run your keys over in your hands, feeling the press of the hot metal and thick plastic against your skin. You didn’t tell your mother where you were going when you left, but to be fair she didn’t ask. You’ve been gone since the morning and no one’s reached out to question what you could possibly have to do on a Wednesday in the middle of summer that could take more than six hours. _

_ The truth is that you don’t have anything to do on a Wednesday in the middle of summer that could take more than six hours. You spent the first two driving as far out of town as you’d ever been and the next three sitting on the side of the road wondering if no one’s noticed you’re gone or if it’s just that no one cares. Another half hour driving back the way you’d come, trying to find that gas station you were sure you’d passed. _

_ Shoving the keys in your pocket, you give him a wave of acknowledgement and start back across the lot. He’s smirking by the time you reach him, pulling out a can of Budweiser and offering it to you. There’s another of Coors Light still in the bag. _

_ You accept the offer and watch as he kicks himself up onto the hood of his car. You lean against it, resting your foot on the bumper. The can makes a satisfying noise as you crack it open, cold in your hand. _

_ “Are you even legal?” you ask, because you’re sure he can’t be that much older than you. He looks eighteen at the most. _

_ He shrugs, that mischievous look back on his face. His teeth are surprisingly white. “She didn’t check for ID.” _

_ You’re not sure why, but you laugh at that. A real laugh, the kind you haven’t had in a while now. It isn’t really funny, but there’s something a little surreal about the way he’s looking at you. Your whole day has felt surreal, so out of character and so unexpected. Maybe you’re just going crazy. Maybe you’re on the same kind of high Jace was when he ran the car off the road, adrenaline a powerful motivator. _

_ “I’m Alec,” you say, leaning a little closer. His leg presses against your side, even hotter than the stifling summer air. You feel dangerous right now. Out of your element. _

_ Leaning against the most pathetic car in existence, drinking with a boy you don’t know outside a half-stocked gas station in the middle of nowhere feels more insane to you than you know it is. Yet, you can’t help the giddy feeling you have anymore than you can help the adrenaline that buzzes through you when you catch this stranger watching your Adam’s apple as you swallow. _

_ “Magnus,” he replies, taking a long, slow slip of his beer. You watch his Adam’s apple, too. _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3 Alec has always been a character I identified strongly with and it's been kind of cathartic to write something like this with him. I do note that Magnus may seem a little out of character here, but no worries. When we see him in the present time he'll be very much the Magnus we all know and love.
> 
> Comments mean the absolute world to me and are a huge motivation to post what I write. I love feedback, welcome critiques, and anything else that crosses your mind while reading this, even if it's just that you enjoyed it.


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